Erik
Collin enjoys this time of the year. Erik is responsible for
posting all the Winter Fund donations to our database, preparing the
deposits and typing all the thank you letters. Then he brings me the
donation letters to sign, fold, lick and seal. None of this would
seem particularly enjoyable, but Erik has turned it into sport. He
delights in waiting until I’m down to my last two letters,
believing I’m just about finished, and then he brings me another
stack. His timing is impeccable. I believe he has me under
surveillance. But it’s a nice problem to have.

So I’m
sitting here signing another huge pile of Winter Fund thank you
letters, and I get to thinking. Turn the clock back to 1993. Can
you imagine me sitting with a group of Wall Street investors in suits
and explaining our business plan?

It goes
like this.

A
bunch of really old guys are going to get together and pool our
money. We’ve got this old ship over in Greece. None of us have
actually seen it, but we hear it’s in pretty good shape. Well, it’s
kind of a fixer-upper. I mean it’s totally gutted on the inside,
but we’re pretty sure we can find all the parts to put it back
together. It’s got all the guns!

We’ve
got a deal with this Ukrainian tugboat Captain. He’s going to
cut us a good price to tow it across from Greece, because he’ll be
picking up a couple destroyers to tow back to Greece. He doesn’t
want to make the trip over empty. We understand Ukrainian’s like
their vodka, but that shouldn’t be a problem with all the modern
electronics, they should be able to find their way over.

When
she gets here we’re not sure where we’re going to put her, but
something will work out.

We
can’t afford to pay people, so once it gets here, we’re going to
ask for volunteers to help restore it. While they are working on
it, we’re going to weave their stories into a newsletter and send
it out to all our potential supporters. It will be kind of like Huck
Finn painting the fence. People will start to identify with these
guys and want to be a part of this effort. Since a lot of them will
live too far away to physically help, they’ll support us by sending
donations. When we get the ship cleaned up, we’ll open it up for
tours and sell tickets and souvenirs. We’ll open the ship one area
at a time as the volunteers get it fixed up.

At
the same time, we’ll develop educational programs including guided
tours, youth group overnight camping, an extensive website, and
historical newsletter. We’ll become a center for collecting
Destroyer Escort memorabilia, documents, photographs and oral
histories. We’ll enlist Navy volunteers to be tour guides who can
speak from the heart about their personal experiences aboard these
ships. We’ll stress the patriotism and sacrifices made by our
greatest generation, and the difficult conditions they encountered
living aboard these ships.

We
know we have to close for four months a year, and we won’t have any
operating income. So we’ll plan an annual fund drive at the end
of the year when we close for the season. We’ll call it the Winter
Fund and use the tagline, “Help keep a volunteer warm this winter.”
That way the donations come in when we need them the most, and at the
time of the year when we have the resources to process all the
donations.And that way the volunteers can keep working on the
ship all winter.

I
think that’s about it. That’s a reasonable business plan,
don’t you think?

That
was 1993, and frankly, I think I’d have been laughed out of the
room. Though apparently by the time the 2008 crash rolled around,
Wall Street was investing in much shakier propositions than SLATER.
It’s now 2013. In August we will celebrate twenty years of SLATER
being back home. How have we done? Thanks to the efforts of Larry
Sowinski who gave us temporary shelter at the INTREPID and then
to Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings and Port Commissioner Bob
Cross, we have a permanent home. And we can’t forget Michele
Vennard and Gordon Lattey who first listened to Marty
Davis’s pitch, looked at the ship and pronounced the project
doable, and all the support we got from the New York State Department
of Military and Naval Affairs in getting set up.

Thanks
to the efforts of all the volunteers in Manhattan, Albany and from
all over the country, I’m sitting on one of the best restored ships
in the country. All those missing parts? We’ve found everything
that a CANNON-class DE would have had aboard in 1945 with the
exception of the evaporators and the donkey boilers that the Greeks
removed. I can’t think of anything else we are missing, from
wardroom china to dummy ammo. Okay, a few more depth charge arbors
would be nice. We’ve got extensive educational programs in place,
one of the best Historic Navy websites in the country. Our volunteers
gave 17,000 hour last year.

And
thanks to our nationwide network of over 3,000 donors the endowment
fund is growing every day. When the bills are paid at the end of
every month we don’t owe anybody a dime. The Hull Fund is
approaching our initial goal, so we’re getting closer to a shipyard
every day. We average 15,000 visitors a year; bring $2.5 million to
the Albany economy, and spent two months last season as
Tripadvisor.com’s number one tourist attraction in Albany. We have
received our Absolute Charter from the NYS Department of Education
and been designated a National Historic Landmark.

It’s
no small fact that the project leadership changed this past year when
Sam Saylor and Frank Lasch made way for BJ Costello and Tony
Esposito, who have taken the reins without missing a beat. Way
back in the day, Marty Davis used the phrase “snowball’s
chance in hell” to describe our chances for success, and he was
just talking about getting the ship over here. If I were an investor,
I think that’s what I would have thought the odds of getting this
far were. Knock on wood, but it’s a good day. Nobody’s bleeding,
no water is coming in and nothing is on fire. And Erik just brought
me another stack of thank you letters to sign. It hardly seems enough
considering your faith in this project.

As I
write this in late January we are about half way through our four
month winter overhaul. Is the work half done? I can only look
around and hope. We thought we were going to get off easy
weather-wise, but then the cold settled in the second week of January
and it’s been tough going, considering that our biggest project
involves being outside. Not a lot of snow, but awfully cold.

This
winter’s main project is the repair of the galley expansion joint,
and the project keeps getting bigger as more rotted metal is
discovered. It’s a contractor’s dream, but not a volunteer’s
dream. On Saturdays Doug Tanner, Tim Benner, Super Dave Mardon and
Chuck Teal have all had a hand in grinding and cutting away
wasted metal. Then on Mondays, Super Dave is back with Earl
Herchenroder, Ron Mazure and Gene Jackey to keep beating at it.
Then Tuesdays and Fridays Bill Wetterau and Bill Siebert
take their turn. Tanner got fed up working in the wind and
constructed another one of his traditional winter Man Caves, a wooden
lattice covered with a plastic tarp. Fire up the kerosene heater and
it’s downright comfortable in there. We’ve cut away an eight-inch
section of the port galley bulkhead along the deck, so essentially
the space is open to the weather. As I write, they are cutting more
metal along the forward bulkhead under the sink, and found a hole in
the deck that is clean through to the engine room. Much like
dentistry, hopefully we’ve just about got all the bad stuff cut out
and we can start filling in with new plate. Then it’s just a matter
of punching 400 holes in the new rubber gaskets, getting the spacing
perfect for each one, and bolting in the new rubber. Piece of cake,
if Doug doesn’t go back to Kansas. By the way, we’re indebted to
Ken Maguire whose father served in USS HAYTER for donating all
new hardware for the expansion joint job.

Our
present group of Navy volunteers finished their SLATER tour of duty
at the end of this month. MM3 Micah Farrell and MM3 James
Wilkerson have started their nuclear power training. The holdover
from the fall group, EM3 Charlie Hancock, has headed out to
the fleet. They worked two days a week under some pretty arduous
conditions cleaning and painting in the bilges. We moved them from
B-4 to B-3, since B-3 has an electric heater and is a little more
comfortable, though not by much. They were disappointed that it was
too cold to paint all the bilge sections they had cleaned. Our
regular engineers have been working alongside side them. Rocky
Rockwood has been cleaning up main engine number three. Gus
Negus, Karl Herchenroder, Ken Myrick, Gary Lubrano and Mike
Dingmon have been alternately making the repairs to the emergency
diesel generator in B-4, working on the cooling for the number three
ship’s service generator in B-3 and working on the restoration of
number four main engine. They’ve also been doing preservation on
the fuel and water tanks. Barry Witte has been restoring the
electrical switch boxes in B-4.

The
radio gang is back at it. Joe Breyer, Jerry Jones, Mike Wyles and Bob
Kibbey unpacked the armature from the wooden packing case and moved
it to the workbench. The shaft ends were covered with Cosmoline
with fabric tape over the threaded portions of the shaft and the tape
was rock hard, but it came off fairly well by heating it with a heat
gun and soaking it with mineral spirits. Removing the Cosmoline was,
as expected, difficult. Joe tried paint thinner and a paint
brush with no success. The he soaked a rag with thinner and
rubbed it with very slow progress. Then he tried kerosene, denatured
alcohol, WD-40, Xylene, a heat gun, and finally lacquer
thinner which did the job. By looking at the "new"
condition of the slip rings and commutator, they had concluded the
unit was new and unused. This is not the case. When the shaft ends
were clean, it was obvious that the key-way has been used, and the
shaft ends on which the flex couplers mount are pretty well
chewed up. Then they meggered the unit and it meggered okay. Finally,
Jerry found ball bearings on E-Bay so they will be replaced. The saga
continues.

The
chippers, Don Miller and Walt Stuart, have been down below the
messdecks scaling the electronics storeroom. Just forward of them
Gary Sheedy is sandblasting and sanding the inside of the
reefer deck coolers. He’s hung up waiting for walnut shells to
arrive to put a nice patina on the cooling coils. Erik Collin
and Thomas Scian have been restringing bunks in the CPO Mess
and forward berthing to prep us for the overnight campers in the
spring. Erik also has the wardroom table covered with MK14 gunsights
that he is cleaning up. Thomas’s Dad, Bob, who continues to
drive all the way from Monticello every Saturday, is striking for
Boatswain’s Mate. He has teamed up with Bill Haggart, Nelson
Potter and Paul Guarnieri to do all the nasty work on deck
in the cold including keeping the mooring lines and wires tight, and
keeping the chaffing gear in good shape. Nelson has also been busy
restoring our wooden Jacob’s ladder and our life rings. We got a
good day’s work from Rachel Tenney, Chris Evanchuck and Matt
Montena, three high school students who moved a lot of valves and
water tight door parts from aft steering to B-2 which has become our
general storeroom. They also hauled a lot of the concrete that had
been chipped out of the galley to the dumpster. Dick and Maralyn
Walker keep the crew supplied with small stores, Smitty keeps
the crew fed, Jim Gelston keeps the clocks wound, and Bob
Callendar keeps track of all the hours.

Guy
Huse and Gary Dieckman made another run to Norfolk to salvage parts
off the TAMAROA. They had a productive two days. Some of the
material they removed included a large ball of marlin for Boats, four
compartment fans, twenty 278 head gaskets, a digital photoelectric
tachometer, three Triplett 630 meters, two boxes of motor and
generator brushes and large fuses, brush holders, air filters and a
complete P-60 fire pump. The trip back was kind of stressing, because
of the poor road conditions, all the over-cautious drivers, and the
massive amounts of salt on the roads. Snow started around the
Virginia / Maryland border and they finally got out of it somewhere
north of New York City. All the stuff was off-loaded and stowed
aboard ship, but this is where we’ve really been missing the
services of our Marine storekeeper John Thompson. John has been
helping a friend remodel a house over the past month, so our level of
organization continues to deteriorate in his absence. Our continued
thanks to Harry Jaeger and Tim Mullane for their
continued support.

None of
this work would be going on if it weren’t for you and your
donations. We can’t thank you enough for your generosity and
your faith in this crew. We’ll keep taking good care of SLATER to
honor you and your shipmates.

We lost
another good man this month, Stan Suzdak. Stan was a gunner’s
mate who served in USS KEY DE348. He used to come to the HUSE work
weeks with his grandson Paul. Stan’s specialty was the mechanics of
the 40mm gun mounts. He, working with Paul and Doug Streiter did
several bearing replacement jobs over the years. Stan approached his
work with a wry sense of humor and a twinkle in his eye. I received
word from Paul that Stan passed away in the
afternoon on Jan 29, 2013, peacefully in his apartment in Boynton
Beach, Florida. Paul said that Grandpa really enjoyed being at the
SLATER, helping with the restoration and also working with the USS
HUSE crew. I was looking forward to seeing them both this
spring.

Finally,
just to show that you can’t keep a good man down,
I was up in my office one Monday and I heard a terrible round of loud
cussing emanating from the main deck passage. The gist of all the
foul language was that nobody ever puts anything back where it
belongs, and you can never find a tool when you need it, and how is
anybody supposed to get anything done when nobody puts anything away?
There’s nothing new about that complaint, but it was the complainer
who got my attention. It turned out to be none other than Chief Clark
Farnsworth, who was looking for the welding
stinger. He and Chris Fedden
have been fabricating pieces for the galley restoration in the
machine shop. I had to wrack my brain to remember who the last person
to use the stinger was, put myself in his shoes and retrace his
probable steps, which led me to the pile of tools on the galley range
and the welding stinger. Keep in mind that Clark turned 91 on January
10th, and is still
frustrated when someone gets between him and an honest day’s work.
You can’t keep a good man down.